1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to the field of systems and methods for generating interactive electronic reference materials from non-interactive hard copy or soft copy reference materials, systems and methods for providing the interactive reference materials to a user, and systems and methods for combining interactive documents with other interactive services into interactive electronic reference systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reference materials, such as, but not limited to, technical manuals, operator's guides, maintenance guides, parts lists, instruction sheets and the like are used in almost every sector of the economy and are almost universally confined to paper. These reference materials provide for information pertaining to a device to which they refer. Therefore, those who are working with, maintaining, repairing, or servicing those devices using those reference materials need to have the device, themselves, and the reference materials in the same place at the same time so that the actions can be performed.
Throughout the years, many different ways have been attempted to make sure that the three pieces meet up at the same place. Many reference materials are printed to be attached to or carried with the device so when the serviceman arrives, the reference material is waiting there. While this solution provides for a high degree of likelihood of the three meeting, the problem lies in the cost of printing, transporting, and updating materials. Keeping reference materials with the device provides that there is usually a copy at the device when the serviceman arrives, but if a single serviceman services 100 similar objects, that results in there being printed 99 extra copies of the materials as the serviceman could have carried a single copy. This both wastes resources of paper and ink as well as storage and transportation resources devoted to storing and moving all that paper. However, if each serviceman was given a copy of the materials above, and 10 servicemen service the same device, resources are also wasted.
The need to change or modify written reference materials is also common. A problem exists in creating a change to a paper publication, delivering the change to every piece of equipment effected by the change, and ultimately posting or attaching the change to the written documentation which is often of fixed form. The gap between completing a change and finally getting it to the existing materials can often be as long as a year due to delays in printing, shipping, and posting. Further, even when the update arrives, it often is placed with the original reference material, not incorporated within it.
Nowhere are the above problems more acute than in the military. When a country is at war in a distant theatre it is imperative that up-to-date maintenance, operation, training and repair information (or other military reference material) be available at the fingertips of those who have to repair, maintain, service and use the systems fighting the battle. As war gets more sophisticated, the problems get larger as more complex systems require more and more documentation to support.
Currently, the United States military relies on paper manuals to operate, repair, and order parts for its machinery, both in peace-time and in war. Unfortunately, these reference manuals are growing more massive by the day. Further, so as to always make sure that anyone who might need a manual has access to the manual, there is a huge amount of repetition and redundancy of documents provided in the military. These manuals can cover everything from how to inflate tires, to how to identify and repair a non-functioning targeting computer. Every C-17 cargo aircraft carries more than 750 pounds of technical manuals, basically the equivalent of 4 additional passengers. Every tank carries technical manuals covering everything from its main gun, to its radios, power plant, turret, electronic data bus, and so on. Support units must carry manuals for everything they support. Further, a general or direct support maintenance unit will carry literally hundreds of manuals covering the myriad of products and systems found in a combat organization. The technical manuals required to support the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) number in excess of 25,000 pages. Further, there are more than 30,000 of these vehicles in the U.S. Army in hundreds of different units deployed around the world. Every one of these units has to carry, maintain, store, and protect these manuals.
It should be apparent that logistically the transport of all these reference materials results in a gargantuan amount of wasted transport space, wasted fuel in hauling paper, and wasted space within military systems as many of these manuals will simply be unneeded as that device does not require maintenance, or, when it does, it is located somewhere where there is another copy of the reference. Hollywood has previously poked fun at exactly this problem with individuals throwing manuals out of airplanes so they can take off, or similar situations where the space and weight of manuals is simply seen as pointless because the manuals are not needed.
The reason for all these reference materials, however, is clear. It is unknown which particular copy of which reference document will be needed by what particular person at what time. Therefore, the only solution to allow for universal access was to provide all the reference materials to everyone who might need them and with all the devices to which they are associated, so when the need is determined, the material is available.
In addition to the space that these reference materials take up, printed reference materials often have the problem of being self-contained while still requiring internal and external reference. That is, the material is in a fixed format which can not be altered. The paper reference document is defined by what is between the covers, and updates made to the material therein require the use of separate reference documents, each of which must be posted to one of the originals, and that require cross-referencing therebetween. Even within a document, referencing to other pages and/or sections is regularly necessary to make the document as a whole vaguely useful as the single order layout mandated by paper publication is rarely entirely sufficient. This cross-referencing, however, requires a user to stop what they are doing and spend time searching the document for what they need next. While this process is simplified through indexing such as tables of contents, page numbers, footnotes, and indexes, the process is still less than ideal and just about everyone has had a reference book held open with pens, papers, fingers, wrenches or other items stuck in pages so that the disclosure of those pages can be located quickly as work progresses and the material is needed. This fixed presentation of the resource material is because the document is not interactive. That is, the document cannot know what the user wants to look at next, and therefore the chosen format of the author may be completely wrong. Again, this problem becomes even more acute in the military as different components of the same device may have been built by different contractors so an operation may be described in one document and continued into another, or the explanation of a part may be in a different document than the one which tells you how to remove the part, which is in a still different document to the one which tells you when to know that the part might have failed.
Yet another problem with paper reference materials in the military is making sure they are secured. Many of these materials include classified information related to the operation and limitations of these devices and the reference materials may be carried to the front lines (as that is where the device they relate to is going) where they can potentially be captured by enemy forces. Therefore, it is often necessary for the crew of a plane, tank, or truck, to have the time to destroy the materials they carry before they are captured, something which is often not possible and further often requires the inclusion of incinerators or other machines in the vehicle, taking up yet more space and more weight.
Even as documents have become electronic, many of the problems still remain. Computer form documents are still slaved to the layout they had in paper form. Some documents may include rudimentary linking (such as indexes or tables of contents) but these are generally confined to a single reference document and further do not provide for interlinking between multiple sections, much less multiple documents as exists in an interactive system. Further systems with rudimentary linking generally require massive numbers of man-hours to produce and there are no systems which allow for the rapid conversion of paper or plain-text documents into interactive electronic documents.